1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the computer-aided conversion of an assemblage of digital data in a first data format to an assemblage of digital data in a second data format, where the data in the second data format is collected in tabular format and is suitable for use in a spreadsheet program.
2. Description of the Related Art
Activity monitoring programs are known. With an activity monitoring program, for example, the performance of a computer system can be recorded and displayed to a user. Such programs work closely with the computer operating system and produce data, for example, reflecting the capacity utilization of the computer system, the access and response times of the computer system, and the like. These data are present in a first data format which is dependent upon the activity timer program. The data are collected by the activity timer program into a report which is given a tabular format through the introduction of spaces and line feeds. The report can be displayed to the user on a screen and/or saved in the memory of the computer system.
Spreadsheet programs are also known, with which any desired data can be processed. These data must exist in a second data format compatible with the spreadsheet program. The data in tabular form can be displayed to the user on the screen in a variety of graphical presentations. Certain lines (rows) or certain columns, or even certain values from the tables can be referred to by the user with the aid of symbolic names. It is likewise possible to carry out calculations or other combinations and to integrate the results again as data in the tables. Finally, the data from spreadsheet programs can frequently be transferred to other programs such as word processing programs.
In the past, if it was desirable or necessary to submit data from reports of activity monitoring programs to further processing using spreadsheet programs, the desired data had to be entered, for example, by a user into the spreadsheet program using the computer system keyboard in a manual fashion. The tabular format of the data had to be taken into account in doing this. The associated disadvantages are obvious.